Wifi card driver fiasco with Lucid Lynx

This did not work as it should have. Ubuntu has shot itself in the foot with the release of 10.04. Thousands of users of one of the most popular laptops on the market will find themselves unable to connect to the Internet on installing Ubuntu, and without any guidelines on how to proceed.

The issue affects wireless connections from the Dell Inspiron 15. What's really strange about this mess is that the scenario was obviously anticipated by the Ubuntu team and steps have been taken to hold the user's hand through the process of establishing a wireless connection via a proprietary driver, but - and here's the rub - this hand-holding only occurs when running Ubuntu 10.04 from the CD.

So, when I first ran Lucid Lynx from the CD, a flag appeared on my desktop telling me that proprietary drivers were available. (It should have been even more to the point - drivers were required for certain hardware devices to work and that I should click here to enable them.) As no wireless networks were visible, I quickly surmised that this flag could help sort that out so I clicked and in the ensuing window, enabled both the drivers listed. Now, since I wasn't connected to a network at the time, I can only conclude that Ubuntu downloaded those drivers form the CD. In any case, within a minute or so, my home wifi network appeared in the dropdown list beneath the wifi icon (in my top menu) and I was able to connect.

Now fast forward to the following evening when I decided to take the plunge and install Ubuntu 10.04 on my hard disk. After installation and logging in, no flag appeared. And of course - there was a red exclamation mark over my wifi icon and no networks listed. Miffed, bothered and bewildered, I tinkered around for a while until I found the Hardware drivers icon under System/Admin. But the ensuing window was empty and devoid of any advice. What was I supposed to do. I needed Synaptic but I didn't have an Internet connection.

To cut a long story short, after an hour or so of anguish - googling dead-ends in Windows, and on the point of just giving up on Ubuntu and formatting the partition, I pulled the Ethernet lead from the router out of the back of the desktop computer and stuck it in my laptop. Now at last I had an Internet connection and after clicking the hardware drivers icon again, Ubuntu presented me with a longish list of updates that I should download. I agreed and lo and behold, when the updates had finished, that missing flag popped up. Yes I cried, yes, enable those 2 proprietary drivers. (I had no idea which, if either, was appropriate.) And at last, after rebooting, I pulled out the Ethernet cable, the wireless icon showed itself and my home wifi network appeared in the list beneath it.

But look, it should not have been this way...

By the way, its the Broadcom STA driver that did the trick.

And what should have happened on logging in the first time? I should have seen a flag advising me that my wifi card would not work without enabling a proprietary driver and that to proceed, I should insert the CD to install that driver.